| QCEA Responses
to the Convention on the Future of Europe
Draft articles on The Union’s Institutions
Part 1, Title IV of the draft Constitutional Treaty
QCEA
Comments: 12 May 2003
- Inclusive
and gender-neutral language must be used in this, and all other
sections of the Constitutional Treaty.
- The
primary objective of the European Central Bank, and all other
Union institutions, must be to further the values and objectives
of the Union: the means used to do this should not be specified
in the Constitutional Treaty.
Detailed
comments and suggested amendments:
Article
16a: The European Council Chair
In
this Article, as well as in Article 18a: The President of the European
Commission and Article 19: The Foreign Minister, the respective
individuals are consistently referred to with the male pronoun ‘he’.
Considering the EU’s commitment to gender equality this language
is inappropriate.
Throughout
the Constitutional Treaty the use of gender-neutral language must
be ensured. This is particularly important when describing office
holders of considerable power as these are the positions where gender
equality is still to be realised in practice.
Article
21: The European Central Bank
Paragraph
2 states that ‘The primary objective of the Bank shall
be to maintain price stability’. Price stability is a
policy instrument, not an end in itself. By giving price stability
such a prominent position, a specific economic ideology is enshrined
in the Constitutional Treaty. The choice of economic strategies
and tools should be a matter of policy debate, not a pre-determined
decision.
The
wording of this paragraph not only specifies the economic instrument
to be used, but goes so far as to state that supporting general
economic policies which contribute to the achievement of the Union’s
objectives is subordinate to the objective of price stability. This
is clearly perverse: the European Central Bank, as all institutions
of the EU, must work towards the achievement of the EU’s objectives.
If price stability proves not to meet these objectives, different
economic tools must be found.
We
suggest the following wording:
21.2:
“The primary objective of the Bank shall be to contribute
to the achievement of the Union’s objectives. Without prejudice
to these objectives, the Bank shall maintain price stability.”
There
is also a need in this Article to describe the democratic accountability
of the Bank. While this may be planned to appear in Part 2, a brief
description would be appropriate here, to make clear the Bank’s
place within the democratic institutional structure of the EU.
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